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Some PhD students here at uni decided to watch "all" of Star Wars using the Machete order (Episodes 4, 5, 2, 3, 6). I wasn't around for all of that, but in my mind it makes sense as an attempt to weave in some of the prequels (I personally would just watch 4, 5, 6, 7 - didn't enjoy Rogue One that much). With regard to the OT, we watched the "despecialized versions" which aim to give you the original experience in Blu-Ray quality. The work that has gone into it is insane.

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I was definitely on the exact same Westworld trajectory as you all, but the last few episodes of the season definitely pulled it out of what could have been a catastrophic tailspin. I think they could have done the same composition of the world and the plot without some of the storytelling elements that were plainly unnecessary, but questions were answered and motives were explained in a way that satisfied me and made me interested in continuing to watch. So I end up disagreeing that it ended up overall being Bad Robot, but I'm also not in the same orbit of prestige television as you thumbs.

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Machete order, as pointed out by Granny Dragon, is 4 5 2 3 6, skipping 1 since it's unnecessary to the plot. Basically your sentiment is right though, the prequels function as a flashback right after the big Vader reveal, then 6 brings it all together with his redemption. But Luke stays the central character. Here's the detailed justification if you're curious. http://www.nomachetejuggling.com/2011/11/11/the-star-wars-saga-suggested-viewing-order/

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The Machete order for experiencing this episode of the podcast was definitely what I got, which was to listen to the livestream but stop early and go to work, then listen to the edited episode. I was wondering why the Jobs talk was left out when Chris kept making patent jokes that are inexplicable without it, then I heard that stuff back in after the break and thought it was strange to put it there but worked about as well as anything, then heard them say the podcast was presented in Machete order and lost my mind laughing.

Great stuff.

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I used to get tired trying to argue that Lost World isn't actually that much worse than Jurassic Park, but now I can just link to this article. Unlike the author I still think JP is a little better than Lost World (the mentioned flattening of Ian Malcolm really hurts it because none of the new characters can really pick up the slack) but only a little. It's highs are higher, but I think it's lows (Grant learns to be a dad, endless hand-wringing over science going too far, the embarrassing ice cream speech) are so much lower.

Not that I think this argument is gonna get much traction on this, the most Jurassic Park loving of all podcasts I've ever listened to. But I always feels like it needs to be said. One of these days people are gonna look back and re-evaluate The Lost World.

And then still probably say it's terrible solely because of one gymnastics scene that is only marginally more ridiculous than Lex's hacking.

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When Chris tweeted about the Zadie Smith discussion, I was put off—I thought he was playing a literary snob card!

But his description on the podcast was really good, especially the conclusion: you don't have to and shouldn't put up with the same old ways of thinking and reacting. Give yourself something that does something different to your brain!

Just knowing that your mind doesn't have to go to the same places all the time and opening yourself to voices who can communicate where their trains of thought are going is reassuring.

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Dinosaur kicking acrobatics was my only real memory from that movie as a kid - and I remember it being some terrible garbage thing - but nah, it is totally a nothing scene.

Lost World is flat and bad though. I will never be convinced that it's remotely on the same level as Jurassic Park I'm sorry to say. (To be honest I stopped reading the AV Club article at the headline because I literally just watched the two movies back to back a few days ago and the answer to that headline is "no, definitively.")

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I agree that the third film is better by admitting that it is meaningless trash and at least having fun with it. Lost World tries to be enviromentalist for half of the film. I remember the dinosaur-catching scene to be quite moving in a what-are-you-doing-to-these-majestic-creatures sense, but quickly after that the film starts going nowhere until the end where it wraps up by trying to be King Kong.

You probably know that Lost World is also based on a novel, Crichton's sequel to the first book. In the first book, Malcom dies. Crichton revives him for the second book. Lost World the novel is very different from the film, but it is among Crichton's worst books. Crichton later said that he would never write a sequel again (he didn't).

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Man, Westworld started off so interesting! It only lasted about 4 episodes before it took a nosedive. I think the problem I had was that the show wasn't about the thing I thought it was about. In the first episode there's a bit where Ford says "Humans can do anything, we've cured every disease etc., this is the best we're going to get" and I thought that was a brilliant premise, because the best that humanity can apparently do in this world is a rape/murder theme park. I thought there was going to be more of a focus on how the world came to accept this awful place and how humanity had build greater and greater technology while learning absolutely nothing from it.

Instead they went down the whole "are the robots just like real people" road, which is the most heavily explored area of robot-based science fiction, and they didn't bring anything new to it. Combined with how long they spent on staggeringly predictable plot twists and mysteries like the Maze, it all felt like a wasted opportunity (barring a glimmer of interesting ideas in the last episode). But most of all, not only did never actually addressed the rape/murder issue at all, they seemed to expect that viewers would accept that the human characters can sexually assault hosts and still be good people, which is completely at odds with the part of the story that wants to convince us that the hosts are conscious. On a meta level, it also felt like they wanted to make another rape and murder HBO show to carry the torch now that Game of Thrones is almost over (especially considering how characters were killed off so frequently, and often for basically no reason).

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I agree that the third film is better by admitting that it is meaningless trash and at least having fun with it. Lost World tries to be enviromentalist for half of the film. I remember the dinosaur-catching scene to be quite moving in a what-are-you-doing-to-these-majestic-creatures sense, but quickly after that the film starts going nowhere until the end where it wraps up by trying to be King Kong.

I also also agree. I kind of like the third one as a wacky dinosaur adventure. I went into it with zero expectations after the second one and came out feeling like it was dumb but fun, which is what I wanted. It's been a long time since I've seen Lost World but the gymnastics scene and a T-Rex running around San Diego are all I remember.

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There's a pretty great 35mm -> 1080p scan of Jurassic Park up on myspleen.org (home of the Harmy Despecialized trilogy). Highly recommended for some truly choice grain and dust specks.

It's a really cool little community, actually, full of gems. I also snatched a restored Matrix with the original colors before everything went Kermit.

EDIT: Oh I forgot, a fan edit of Episode 1, where basically a ton of things the general fan community doesn't like were trimmed, as well as what I think is a super cool use of editing to color young Anakin:

Quote

* Anakin's ship is not on autopilot as he goes of to destroy thecontrol ship. All all of his actions are deliberate.

Edited January 13, 2017 by prawks

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The holy grail of restorations is, as far as I'm concerned, owned by Tim Burton. Apparently he owns a print of a fully edited version of Mars Attack that has NO CGI in it. It's an entire movie of people freaking out over invisible invaders. Word is he will occasionally screen it for friends and people in the industry and it is a hilarious and completely moronic thing.

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The holy grail of restorations is, as far as I'm concerned, owned by Tim Burton. Apparently he owns a print of a fully edited version of Mars Attack that has NO CGI in it. It's an entire movie of people freaking out over invisible invaders. Word is he will occasionally screen it for friends and people in the industry and it is a hilarious and completely moronic thing.

Holy crap I would love to see that.

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After catching up on a few podcasts I missed, I'm really interested in learning more about the layout of Disneyland and the psychology behind theme parks in general. Does anyone know any good podcasts or books on the topic?